


another thing coming undone

by alpacas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, but CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP, caleb is in this mostly in the sense that any story about nott is 40 percent about him, full body dysmorphia all day every day, i love nott protect nott even if she's not nott I DON'T CARE, is the nott way, references episode 48 and will probably be jossed, the two of them are all i live for honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 19:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17514347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas
Summary: And then she casts:disguise self.





	another thing coming undone

**Author's Note:**

> hi i saw it mentioned that nott introduces herself as 'veth' way back in [episode 18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C-frHrNWjY&feature=youtu.be&t=03h029m034s) while in disguise and i'm not okay? 
> 
> **edit 2/1:** changed the ending very slightly to match with e49 (but honestly i am pretty pleased with how it holds up considering it was written before nott = veth was confirmed!)
> 
>  
> 
> title from 'runaway' by The National:
>
>> no i won't be no runaway/  
> but what makes you think i'm enjoying being led to the flood?/  
> we got another thing coming undone/  
> and it's taking us over.

It doesn't hurt — much.

 

It's a pain, a feeling, a dullness Nott is used to, can push aside easily enough, tuck into a pocket with her baubles and buttons, to be taken and examined later, in the dark. What will she keep? What will she send home? What shiny thing might Luke like the best? They're safe, and that's what matters. They're safe, and that makes it fine — leaving, leaving them, hiding her face and arms and skin with bandages. It doesn't hurt, really, really not at all, as long as they're okay, Luke is okay, and she can provide for her boy. Even far from home. It's okay.

It's okay.

 

 

Some days are better than others. Some days she wakes early, the sun too bright in her eyes, burrowing herself into her blanket, against Caleb's feet. On these mornings Nott will think: yes! Today! She will steal things and not need to drink and have  _fun_ and  _make Luke proud_. She will rise and think of all the food she wants to eat, the pockets she wants to pick: look over at Caleb, snoring, unshaven, lank haired, and think: and I will have him change his clothes. I will have him take a bath. And it will remind her of when Luke was very small and needed her to do these things, to fill a washtub and splash him with water until he giggled and she too was soaked. On some mornings, good mornings, Nott knows she is not taking care of her boy, her Caleb, and resolves to do so better.

Fills his pockets with silver when he is not looking. Hopes for passerby carrying rare books she can steal him. (Has yet to happen — but someday! A whole library for him, from her — magic books and other books, any kind of book, so he smiles and picks her up, which she does like, a bit, when he forgets she is grown — old enough to be a mother — and treats her instead like a baby sister. He is _hers_ , but she likes belonging to someone, too.)

And then she catches her reflection in the glass or a rare mirror or water, or her bandages itch her ears, her hair catches in a button, her clumsy four fingered hands stumble as she wraps her hood —

 

Some days she wakes up cold and taut, dreaming of being at the bottom of a deep, dark pool. Her throat tight and dry when she wakes, curled up over Caleb's calves, and she realizes: why bother make him wash? Why bother dress him better? He'll ask her to take a bath, thinking he's giving her a treat, and her gratitude will shrivel in her mouth, because what is the point? Of her clothes being fresh? Of her hair being clean? She's still  _a goblin girl_. She's still — 

 

It's about ninety-ten, those mornings. The ratio of it. The times Nott gives up before she begins, curls herself more deeply into the blankets and tries to go back to sleep.

 

The first time she'd cast  _disguise self_ , she hadn't known she would do it. She'd studied the words and Caleb's hands, all his waving fingers, and she had a notion of it, an idea of it, but she hadn't planned to try it until the moment she  _did_ , as the others were defacing a poster and she was happy, relaxed, having fun. But there had been guards, and she'd seen all four of them, plotting her movements and their lines of sight: she's still just a goblin. So she'd ducked into an alley — 

Nott had known she'd succeed in the spell. She hadn't had a reason to think so, hadn't practiced, but she'd known, the way she'd always had a sense — for when a purse is heavy with coin, light in her fingers. For when to run fast, far, away. For how she knows her crossbow is loaded correctly, how to recognize Yeza's alchemy ingredients — she knows it will work, and flush with confidence she imagines — 

(A halfling woman. Braids, often disheveled. Face, round and often flushed. All reds and browns, no goblin green and yellow, no lank black hair, always in her face, always in the way, but if she were to brush it away, braid it, for example, her face would be all the clearer —)

Hah! Nope! No way! Nott glances around the corner. Fjord is the first one she sees, the back of his towering head and shoulders: yes, good idea. Also, it would be, she suspects, funny. And it  _is_. Everyone loves it. She feels funny and clever and even more so in the bath — getting naked? Showing herself? Hah! No way! As if! — but she can watch and half drown and be angry and happy in strange turns, safely hidden as short Fjord, still green, but not herself. When her Caleb uses his string to tie up her hair, she's surprised and feels something — something like  _feeling pretty_ , something like that, flattered and special and cared for and cute.

She is still — even _she_ is still a girl.

And it lasts, and it lasts, and then that night in the inn she catches her reflection in the window glass: ponytail and bandages and cat yellow eyes, and feels a recoil, a thick and heavy and angry wave at — herself. At Caleb, even. At Yeza, even. At life.

Even.

 

 

And so she can't sleep, of course: curls up as always and waits until she hears Caleb's familiar soft noises: not snores but snuffled breaths, uneven, uneasy.

She gets up all her nerve, all her bravery:

"Caleb," Nott whispers.

He doesn't stir.

"Caleb!" Nott says, a bit louder.

She pokes his foot.

He twitches a bit, but does not wake, and she watches him from the foot of the bed until she's sure,  _really_ sure, and then creeps from it. There's a washroom at the end of the hall, basins and wooden tubs for filling, dark and deserted, not that that matters — not that that isn't what she  _wants_ , and it's there, in the inn's washroom, the door shut and three washbasins and an empty chamber pot pushed up against it just in case. Just in case she needs to flee through the window, which she thinks to unlatch —

And then she casts:  _disguise self_.

 

 

There are no mirrors. She is taller, but this body, Veth's body, has no true weight, no true heft. She can't touch it, but she tries, carefully running her hands, her human hands, over the illusionary clothing and skin, arms and legs and face, imagining the pressure, imagining the feeling of halfling skin, which had been rough and sometimes dry but always softer than Nott's, remembering what it had been like to have breasts, to have hips, to have  _weight_ , a roundness to her shoulders, a softness to her, to be not a goblin girl but a  _grown woman_ , pretty and clean and without layers and layers to hide her skin. 

But whenever she touches — she feels her hand, her fingers, scraping against her skin, her goblin skin, her nails untrimmed and catching on bandages, freshly cleaned but permanently yellowed, the illusion without weight, the illusion without  _illusion_ , unable of convincing the one it was meant to trick.

 

 

_Luke, do you remember me? Luke, do you miss me at all? Luke, if you saw me like this, would you believe it was real?_

 

 

Nott slinks back to her room, bile in her throat after vomiting twice in the chamber pot, leaving it there on the floor, rejected, full, the illusion dropped and discarded, she will not — she will not become Veth again. She curls up on the corner of the bed, small enough to fit in the space between the edge and her Caleb, and while Nott expects to lie awake and miserable she is asleep almost at once —

She is Veth, but Veth is lying wet and dead or dying in the sand, and she is watching from nearby. She is Veth, but she covers herself in sheets and blankets to hide herself from the mirror, from the room, from herself. You are Veth, she tells herself, grasping at her arms, hands encircling her tiny green wrists — you are Veth, you can be, and she hears herself cry as if from above, as if from far away: I am not, I am not,

I am not —


End file.
